Earthquakes,10 Technologies That Help Buildings Resist it.

Never fear. If you're not ready to live in a soccer ball-shaped house that's resistant to earthquakes and floats on water, you may have some other options on your hands.

© Yuriko Nakao/Reuters/Corbis

The Bronze Age saw the rise of several successful civilizations, including a few that managed to build impressive cities with ordered grids and sophisticated plumbing. Now, scientists think that tectonic activity may have contributed to the demise of some of these ancient cultures. For example, research conducted at the city of Megiddo (now part of present-day Israel) suggests that a massive earthquake may have devastated the city, leading to the sandwich-like layers found in excavations. And a series of earthquakes may have brought down the Harappan civilization (in what's now Pakistan), which disappeared suddenly in 1900 B.C.E.

We're just as susceptible today to the aftereffects of powerful earthquakes. When exposed to the sudden lateral forces produced by seismic waves, even modern buildings and bridges can fail completely and collapse, crushing the people in, on and around them. If anything, the problem has become worse as more people live in urban environments and as structures have grown. Luckily, over the last few decades, architects and engineers have devised a number of clever technologies to ensure that houses, multi dwelling units and skyscrapers bend but don't break. As a result, the building's inhabitants can walk out unharmed and start picking up the pieces.

On the next few pages, we've assembled 10 of these temblor-thwarting technologies. Some have been around for several years. Others, like the first item in our countdown, are relatively new ideas that are still being 
tested.

For centuries there have been accounts of animals behaving bizarrely before earthquakes.Now, for the first time, scientists have filmed the behaviour of wild animals prior to a quake and believe their study could help improve short-term seismic forecasting.They found that animals in Peru - such as pumas and razor-billed curassow birds - ran for cover days before the event. Researchers believe that the changes in behaviour may be linked to airborne ions. Led by Dr Rachel Grant of Anglia Ruskin University, experts used data gathered from a series of motion-triggered cameras located in the Yanachaga National Park in Peru.

The research found that significant changes in animal behaviour began 23 days before the magnitude 7.0 Contamana earthquake that struck the region in 2011.

On a typical day, the cameras would record between five and 15 animal sightings.

However, within the 2-day period in the run-up to the earthquake, they recorded five or fewer sightings.

For five of the seven days immediately before the earthquake, no animal movements were recorded at all, which was incredibly unusual for the mountainous rainforest region.

Dr Grant, a lecturer in animal and environmental biology, told MailOnline that rodents seemed to be particularly sensitive and disappeared completely eight days before the quake.

‘Usually they’re quite ubiquitous in the forest. They’re very common and were everywhere in the control period, but then completely disappeared.’